Official Text of Hillary Clinton address at Columbia University

"Criminal Justice and Reform in America"

Hillary R. Clinton

Thank you so much. I am absolutely delighted to be back here at Columbia. I want to thank President Bollinger, Dean Janow, and everyone at the School of International and Public Affairs. It is a special treat to be here with and on behalf of a great leader of this city and our country, David Dinkins. He has made such an indelible impact on New York, and I had the great privilege of working with him as First Lady and then, of course, as a new senator.

When I was just starting out as a senator, David's door was always open. He and his wonderful wife Joyce were great friends and supporters and good sounding boards about ideas that we wanted to consider to enhance the quality of life and the opportunities for the people of this city. I was pleased to address the Dinkins Leadership and Public Policy Forum in my first year as a senator, and I so appreciated then as I have in the years since David's generosity with his time and most of all his wisdom. So 14 years later, I'm honored to have this chance, once again, to help celebrate the legacy of one of New York's greatest public servants.

I'm pleased too that you will have the opportunity after my remarks to hear from such a distinguished panel, to go into more detail about some of the issues that we face. I also know that Manhattan Borough President Gale Brewer is here, along with other local and community leaders.

"We have to come to terms with some hard truths about race and justice in America"

Because surely this is a time when our collective efforts to devise approaches to the problems that still afflict us is more important than ever. Indeed, it is a time for wisdom.

For yet again, the family of a young black man is grieving a life cut short.

Yet again, the streets of an American city are marred by violence. By shattered glass and shouts of anger and shows of force.

Yet again a community is reeling, its fault lines laid bare and its bonds of trust and respect frayed.

Yet again, brave police officers have been attacked in the line of duty.

What we've seen in Baltimore should, indeed does, tear at our soul.

And, from Ferguson to Staten Island to Baltimore, the patterns have become unmistakable and undeniable.

Walter Scott shot in the back in Charleston, South Carolina. Unarmed. In debt. And terrified of spending more time in jail for child support payments he couldn't afford.

Tamir Rice shot in a park in Cleveland, Ohio. Unarmed and just 12 years old.

Eric Garner choked to death after being stopped for selling cigarettes on the streets of this city.

And now Freddie Gray. His spine nearly severed while in police custody.

Not only as a mother and a grandmother but as a citizen, a human being, my heart breaks for these young men and their families.

We have to come to terms with some hard truths about race and justice in America.

"We have allowed our criminal justice system to get out of balance"

There is something profoundly wrong when African American men are still far more likely to be stopped and searched by police, charged with crimes, and sentenced to longer prison terms than are meted out to their white counterparts.

There is something wrong when a third of all black men face the prospect of prison during their lifetimes. And an estimated 1.5 million black men are "missing" from their families and communities because of incarceration and premature death.

There is something wrong when more than one out of every three young black men in Baltimore can't find a job.

There is something wrong when trust between law enforcement and the communities they serve breaks down as far as it has in many of our communities.

We have allowed our criminal justice system to get out of balance. And these recent tragedies should galvanize us to come together as a nation to find our balance again.

We should begin by heeding the pleas of Freddie Gray's family for peace and unity, echoing the families of Michael Brown, Trayvon Martin, and others in the past years.

Those who are instigating further violence in Baltimore are disrespecting the Gray family and the entire community. They are compounding the tragedy of Freddie Gray's death and setting back the cause of justice. So the violence has to stop.

But more broadly, let's remember that everyone in every community benefits when there is respect for the law and when everyone in every community is respected by the law. That is what we have to work towards in Baltimore and across our country.

We must urgently begin to rebuild the bonds of trust and respect among Americans. Between police and citizens, yes, but also across society.

" our legal system can be and all too often is stacked against those who have the least power"

Restoring trust in our politics, our press, our markets. Between and among neighbors and even people with whom we disagree politically.

This is so fundamental to who we are as a nation and everything we want to achieve together.

It truly is about how we treat each other and what we value. Making it possible for every American to reach his or her God-given potential—regardless of who you are, where you were born, or who you love.

The inequities that persist in our justice system undermine this shared vision of what America can be and should be.

I learned this firsthand as a young attorney just out of law school—at one of those law schools that will remain nameless here at Columbia. One of my earliest jobs for the Children's Defense Fund, which David had mentioned—I was so fortunate to work with Marian Wright Edelman as a young lawyer and then serving on the board of the Children's Defense Fund—was studying the problem then of youth, teenagers, sometimes preteens, incarcerated in adult jails. Then, as director of the University of Arkansas School of Law's legal aid clinic, I advocated on behalf of prison inmates and poor families.

I saw repeatedly how our legal system can be and all too often is stacked against those who have the least power, who are the most vulnerable.

I saw how families could be and were torn apart by excessive incarceration. I saw the toll on children growing up in homes shattered by poverty and prison.

So, unfortunately, I know these are not new challenges by any means.

In fact they have become even more complex and urgent over time. And today they demand fresh thinking and bold action from all of us.

Today there seems to be a growing bipartisan movement for commonsense reforms in our criminal justice systems. Senators as disparate on the political spectrum as Cory Booker and Rand Paul and Dick Durbin and Mike Lee are reaching across the aisle to find ways to work together. It is rare to see Democrats and Republicans agree on anything today. But we're beginning to agreeing on this: We need to restore balance to our criminal justice system.

Now of course it is not enough just to agree and give speeches about it—we actually have to work together to get the job done.

We need to deliver real reforms that can be felt on our streets, in our courthouses, and our jails and prisons, in communities too long neglected.

Let me touch on two areas in particular where I believe we need to push for more progress.

First, we need smart strategies to fight crime that help restore trust between law enforcement and our communities, especially communities of color.

"We should make sure every police department in the country has body cameras"

There's a lot of good work to build on. Across the country, there are so many police officers out there every day inspiring trust and confidence, honorably doing their duty, putting themselves on the line to save lives. There are police departments already deploying creative and effective strategies, demonstrating how we can protect the public without resorting to unnecessary force. We need to learn from those examples, build on what works.

We can start by making sure that federal funds for state and local law enforcement are used to bolster best practices, rather than to buy weapons of war that have no place on our streets.

President Obama's task force on policing gives us a good place to start. Its recommendations offer a roadmap for reform, from training to technology, guided by more and better data.

We should make sure every police department in the country has body cameras to record interactions between officers on patrol and suspects.

That will improve transparency and accountability, it will help protect good people on both sides of the lens. For every tragedy caught on tape, there surely have been many more that remained invisible. Not every problem can be or will be prevented with cameras, but this is a commonsense step we should take.

The President has provided the idea of matching funds to state and local governments investing in body cameras. We should go even further and make this the norm everywhere.

And we should listen to law enforcement leaders who are calling for a renewed focus on working with communities to prevent crime, rather than measuring success just by the number of arrests or convictions.

As your Senator from New York, I supported a greater emphasis on community policing, along with putting more officers on the street to get to know those communities.

David Dinkins was an early pioneer of this policy. His leadership helped lay the foundation for dramatic drops in crime in the years that followed.

And today smart policing in communities that builds relationships, partnerships, and trust makes more sense than ever.

And it shouldn't be limited just to officers on the beat. It's an ethic that should extend throughout our criminal justice system. To prosecutors and parole officers. To judges and lawmakers.

We all share a responsibility to help re-stitch the fabric of our neighborhoods and communities.

We also have to be honest about the gaps that exist across our country, the inequality that stalks our streets. Because you cannot talk about smart policing and reforming the criminal justice system if you also don't talk about what's needed to provide economic opportunity, better educational chances for young people, more support to families so they can do the best jobs they are capable of doing to help support their own children.

"we don't want to create another incarceration generation"

Today I saw an article on the front page of USA Today that really struck me, written by a journalist who lives in Baltimore. And here's what I read three times to make sure I was reading correctly: "At a conference in 2013 at Johns Hopkins University, Vice Provost Jonathan Bagger pointed out that only six miles separate the Baltimore neighborhoods of Roland Park and Hollins Market.

But there is a 20-year difference in the average life expectancy." We have learned in the last few years that life expectancy, which is a measure of the quality of life in communities and countries, manifests the same inequality that we see in so many other parts of our society.

Women—white women without high school education—are losing life expectancy. Black men and black women are seeing their life expectancy goes down in so many parts of our country.

This may not grab headlines, although I was glad to see it on the front page of USA Today. But it tells us more than I think we can bear about what we are up against.

We need to start understanding how important it is to care for every single child as though that child were our own.

David and I started our conversation this morning talking about our grandchildren; now his are considerably older than mine. But it was not just two longtime friends catching up with each other. It was so clearly sharing what is most important to us, as it is to families everywhere in our country.

So I don't want the discussion about criminal justice, smart policing, to be siloed and to permit discussions and arguments and debates about it to only talk about that. The conversation needs to be much broader. Because that is a symptom, not a cause, of what ails us today.

The second area where we need to chart a new course is how we approach punishment and prison.

It's a stark fact that the United States has less than 5 percent of the world's population, yet we have almost 25 percent of the world's total prison population. The numbers today are much higher than they were 30, 40 years ago, despite the fact that crime is at historic lows.

Of the more than 2 million Americans incarcerated today, a significant percentage are low-level offenders: people held for violating parole or minor drug crimes, or who are simply awaiting trial in backlogged courts.

Keeping them behind bars does little to reduce crime. But it is does a lot to tear apart families and communities.

"Without the mass incarceration that we currently practice, millions fewer people would be living in poverty"

One in every 28 children now has a parent in prison. Think about what that means for those children.

When we talk about one and a half million missing African American men, we're talking about missing husbands, missing fathers, missing brothers.

They're not there to look after their children or bring home a paycheck. And the consequences are profound.

Without the mass incarceration that we currently practice, millions fewer people would be living in poverty.

And it's not just families trying to stay afloat with one parent behind bars. Of the 600,000 prisoners who reenter society each year, roughly 60 percent face long-term unemployment.

And for all this, taxpayers are paying about $80 billion a year to keep so many people in prison.

The price of incarcerating a single inmate is often more than $30,000 per year—and up to $60,000 in some states. That's the salary of a teacher or police officer.

One year in a New Jersey state prison costs $44,000—more than the annual tuition at Princeton.

If the United States brought our correctional expenditures back in line with where they were several decades ago, we'd save an estimated $28 billion a year. And I believe we would not be less safe. You can pay a lot of police officers and nurses and others with $28 billion to help us deal with the pipeline issues.

It's time to change our approach. It's time to end the era of mass incarceration. We need a true national debate about how to reduce our prison population while keeping our communities safe.

I don't know all the answers. That's why I'm here—to ask all the smart people in Columbia and New York to start thinking this through with me. I know we should work together to pursue together to pursue alternative punishments for low-level offenders. They do have to be in some way registered in the criminal justice system, but we don't want that to be a fast track to long-term criminal activity, we don't want to create another "incarceration generation."

I've been encouraged to see changes that I supported as Senator to reduce the unjust federal sentencing disparity between crack and powder cocaine crimes finally become law.

And last year, the Sentencing Commission reduced recommended prison terms for some drug crimes.

"Our prisons and our jails are now our mental health institutions"

President Obama and former Attorney General Holder have led the way with important additional steps. And I am looking forward to our new Attorney General, Loretta Lynch, carrying this work forward.

There are other measures that I and so many others have championed to reform arbitrary mandatory minimum sentences are long overdue.

We also need probation and drug diversion programs to deal swiftly with violations, while allowing low-level offenders who stay clean and stay out of trouble to stay out of prison. I've seen the positive effects of specialized drug courts and juvenile programs work to the betterment of individuals and communities. And please, please, let us put mental health back at the top of our national agenda.

You and I know that the promise of de-institutionalizing those in mental health facilities was supposed to be followed by the creation of community-based treatment centers. Well, we got half of that equation—but not the other half. Our prisons and our jails are now our mental health institutions.

I have to tell you I was somewhat surprised in both Iowa and New Hampshire to be asked so many questions about mental health. "What are we going to do with people who need help for substance abuse or mental illness?" "What are we going to do when the remaining facilities are being shut down for budget reasons?" "What are we going to do when hospitals don't really get reimbursed for providing the kind of emergency care that is needed for mental health patients?"

It's not just a problem in our cities. There's a quiet epidemic of substance abuse sweeping small-town and rural America as well. We have to do more and finally get serious about treatment.

I'll be talking about all of this in the months to come, offering new solutions to protect and strengthen our families and communities.

I know in a time when we're afflicted by short-termism, we're not looking over the horizon for the investments that we need to make in our fellow citizens, in our children. So I'm well aware that progress will not be easy, despite the emerging bipartisan consensus for certain reforms. And that we will have to overcome deep divisions and try to begin to replenish our depleted reservoirs of trust.

"Let's take on the broader inequities in our society"

But I am convinced, as the congenital optimist I must be to live my life, that we can rise to this challenge. We can heal our wounds. We can restore balance to our justice system and respect in our communities. And we can make sure that we take actions that are going to make a difference in the lives of those who for too long have been marginalized and forgotten.

Let's protect the rights of all our people. Let's take on the broader inequities in our society. You can't separate out the unrest we see in the streets from the cycles of poverty and despair that hollow out those neighborhoods.

Despite all the progress we've made in this country lifting people up—and it has been extraordinary—too many of our fellow citizens are still left out.

Twenty-five years ago, in his inaugural address as Mayor, David Dinkins warned of leaving "too many lost amidst the wealth and grandeur that surrounds us."

Today, his words and the emotion behind them ring truer than ever. You don't have to look too far from this magnificent hall to find children still living in poverty or trapped in failing schools. Families who work hard but can't afford the rising prices in their neighborhood.

Mothers and fathers who fear for their sons' safety when they go off to school—or just to go buy a pack of Skittles.

These challenges are all woven together. And they all must be tackled together.

Our goal must truly be inclusive and lasting prosperity that's measured by how many families get ahead and stay ahead...

How many children climb out of poverty and stay out of prison...

How many young people can go to college without breaking the bank...

How many new immigrants can start small businesses ...

How many parents can get good jobs that allow them to balance the demands of work and family.

That's how we should measure prosperity. With all due respect, that is a far better measurement than the size of the bonuses handed out in downtown office buildings.

Now even in the most painful times like those we are seeing in Baltimore ...

When parents fear for their children...

When smoke fills the skies above our cities...

When police officers are assaulted...

Even then—especially then—let's remember the aspirations and values that unite us all: That every person should have the opportunity to succeed. That no one is disposable. That every life matters.

So yes, Mayor Dinkins. This is a time for wisdom.

A time for honesty about race and justice in America.

And, yes, a time for reform.

David Dinkins is a leader we can look to. We know what he stood for. Let us take the challenge and example he presents and think about what we must do to make sure that this country we love—this city we live in—are both good and great.

And please join me in saying a prayer for the family of Freddie Gray, and all the men whose names we know and those we don't who have lost their lives unnecessarily and tragically. And in particular today, include in that prayer the people of Baltimore and our beloved country.

Thank you all very much.

| Editorial  NY TIMES

Forcing Black Men Out of Society

By THE EDITORIAL BOARD

An analysis in The Times — "1.5 Million Missing Black Men" — showed that more than one in every six black men in the 24-to-54 age group has disappeared from civic life, mainly because they died young or are locked away in prison. This means that there are only 83 black men living outside of jail for every 100 black women — in striking contrast to the white population, where men and women are about equal in numbers.

This astounding shortfall in black men translates into lower marriage rates, more out-of-wedlock births, a greater risk of poverty for families and, by extension, less stable communities. The missing men should be a source of concern to political leaders and policy makers everywhere.

While the 1.5 million number is startling, it actually understates the severity of the crisis that has befallen African-American men since the collapse of the manufacturing and industrial centers, which was quickly followed by the "war on drugs" and mass imprisonment, which drove up the national prison population more than sevenfold beginning in the 1970s.

In addition to the "missing," millions more are shut out of society, or are functionally missing, because of the shrinking labor market for low-skilled workers, racial discrimination or sanctions that prevent millions who have criminal convictions from getting all kinds of jobs. At the same time, the surge in imprisonment has further stigmatized blackness itself, so that black men and boys who have never been near a jail now have to fight the presumption of criminality in many aspects of day-to-day life — in encounters with police, in schools, on the streets and on the job.

The data on missing African-American men is not particularly new. Every census for the last 50 years has shown the phenomenon.

In earlier decades, premature death played a larger role than it does today. But since the 1980s, the rising number of black men who were spared premature death was more than offset by the growing number shipped off to prison, many for nonviolent drug offenses. The path to that catastrophe was paved by what the sociologist William Julius Wilson described as "the disappearance of work," which devastated formerly coherent neighborhoods.

As deindustrialization got underway, earnings declined, neighborhoods grew poorer and businesses moved to the suburbs, beyond the reach of inner city residents. As Mr. Wilson wrote in his 1996 book, "When Work Disappears," for the first time in the 20th century, most adults in many poor inner-city neighborhoods were not working.

Joblessness became the norm, creating a "nonworking class," that lived in segregated areas where most residents could not find jobs or had given up looking. In Chicago, where, Mr. Wilson carried out his research, employers wrote off the poor by not advertising in places where they could see the ads. The situation was so grave in 1996 that he recommended the resurrection of a Works Progress Administration-like strategy, under which the government would provide public employment to every American over 18 who wanted it.

The stigmatization of blackness presents an enormous obstacle, even to small boys. Last year, for example, the Department of Education reported that black children were far more likely to be suspended from school — even from preschool — than white children. Federal cases also show higher rates of public school suspensions for minority students than for white students for identical behavior, suggesting that racial discrimination against black males starts very early in life.

The sociologist Devah Pager, a Harvard professor who has meticulously researched the effect of race on hiring policies, has also shown that stereotypes have a powerful effect on job possibilities. In one widely cited study, she sent carefully selected test applicants with equivalent résumés to apply for low-level jobs with hundreds of employers. Ms. Pager found that criminal convictions for black men seeking employment were virtually impossible to overcome in many contexts, partly because convictions reinforced powerful, longstanding stereotypes.

The stigma of a criminal record was less damaging for white testers. In fact, those who said that they were just out of prison were as likely to be called back for a second interview as black men who had no criminal history at all. "Being black in America today is just about the same as having a felony conviction in terms of one’s chances of finding a job," she wrote in her book, "Marked: Race, Crime and Finding Work in an Era of Mass Incarceration."

In recent months, the many grievous cases of unarmed black men and boys who were shot dead by the police — now routinely captured on video — show how the presumption of criminality, poverty and social isolation threatens lives every day in all corners of this country.

Promiment Catholics Ask Pope Francis to Remove San Francisco Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone

In an unprecedented move, more than 100 prominent Roman Catholic donors and church members signed a full-page ad running Thursday in The Chronicle that calls on Pope Francis to replace San Francisco Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone for fostering "an atmosphere of division and intolerance."

The plea follows months of dissent within the archdiocese over Cordileone’s emphasis on traditional, conservative church doctrine — including asking high school teachers and staffers at Catholic schools to sign a morality clause that characterizes sex outside of marriage and homosexual relations as "gravely evil."

In their open letter to the pope, Cordileone’s critics say his morality-clause push is mean-spirited and "sets a pastoral tone that is closer to persecution than evangelization."

The ad drew swift condemnation from the archdiocese, which said those who signed it don’t speak for San Francisco’s Catholic community.

The list of signatories includes Brian Cahill, the retired executive director of Catholic Charities, former city commissioner and Boudin Bakery executive Lou Giraudo, retired Swinerton Builders Chairman David Grubb, businessman and former political consultant Clint Reilly and his wife, Janet, San Francisco attorney Michael Kelly, and Charles Geschke, chairman of Adobe Systems and former head of the University of San Francisco Board of Trustees. Also on the list is Tom Brady Sr., father of New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady.

Among their complaints, they say Cordileone:

•Picked a pastor for Star of the Sea parish in the Richmond District "who marginalizes women’s participation in the church by banning girls from altar service" and who provided elementary-school children with a pamphlet about sexuality that asked whether they had masturbated, engaged in sodomy or undergone an abortion.

Prominent Catholics have taken out a full-page ad in The Chronicle calling on Pope Francis to replace San Francisco Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone "with a leader true to our values and your namesake."

•Disregards the advice of his own priests and retired priests in favor of "a tiny group of advisers recruited from outside (the) diocese and estranged from their own religious orders."

•Threatens the long-term health of the archdiocese by adopting a "single-issue agenda" against same-sex marriage.

"It seems he is going in a direction that is completely opposite where Pope Francis is going and creating an atmosphere of complete intolerance," said Peninsula attorney Frank Pitre who, along with his wife, Diane, signed the letter. "Hopefully, this is going to get someone’s attention.’’

Nibbi Brothers construction executive Larry Nibbi, who also signed the letter, said the archbishop "is just causing a lot of discord, especially with the young people in the diocese."

"The crux of our worry is that the faithful are going to become very disenchanted and stop going to church because they don’t like the message, and the message is not the way they lead their lives," Nibbi said.

Neither The Chronicle’s business department nor those associated with the ad would say how much it cost. We’re told, however, that full-page ads typically run in the tens of thousands of dollars.

A statement by the archdiocese provided to us Wednesday called the ad "a misrepresentation of Catholic teaching, a misrepresentation of the nature of the teacher contract, and a misrepresentation of the spirit of the archbishop. The greatest misrepresentation of all is that the signers presume to speak for 'the Catholic Community of San Francisco.’

"They do not."

The statement also said archdiocese officials have "met with a broad range of stakeholders. Together, we have engaged in a constructive dialogue on all of the issues raised in this ad. We welcome the chance to continue that discussion.’’

According to a source familiar with the drafting of the open letter to Francis, the disaffected Catholics first considered running the ad weeks ago. They held off while they appealed to church higher-ups — including the papal representative in Washington — to address their concerns.

When nothing came of that, they went public.

Incidentally, don’t expect Cordileone to start soft-pedaling his opposition to same-sex marriage. He’s encouraging the faithful to join him at a big march in the nation’s capital in favor of "traditional" marriage on April 25, three days before the U.S. Supreme Court hears arguments in a case that could result in the justices declaring a constitutional right for gays and lesbians to wed.

San Francisco Chronicle columnists Phillip Matier and Andrew Ross

Comment at KPIX CBS San Francisco:

Tatar-salad
3 hours ago

These days there are so many different types of homosexuals, it's mind boggling. LGBT, LGBTQ, LGBTQA, TBLG, and on and on. Since I'm not sure what to call homosexuals without offending them, I'm going to refer to them as "Special Snowflakes".

Special Snowflakes make up about 3% of the population. Special Snowflakes are a protected class of people and have their own parades. Special Snowflakes also do what they can to invade everyone else's parades as well, as Special Snowflakes want everyone to think just like them.

My favorite Special Snowflake story was a married couple of two female special snowflakes who adopted a little boy, who was just a regular snowflake. When he was a toddler, the two special snowflake parents proclaimed their regular snowflake baby boy wanted to be a woman and began demanding a sex change operation so he could also be a special snowflake. A toddler.

I've known many special snowflakes as I've gone through life. I don't like to put people into categories, not even special snowflakes. But, of all of them, and there were several, there was only one couple that I would trust to be around my children. Why? Because, for the most part, they were all perverse exhibitionists (even if only in the privacy of their homes) who were consumed with their sexuality.

When special snowflakes try to change the social paradigm of a man and woman as a family unit, they have overstepped their bounds. Just my opinion I suppose.

WWJD? What would Jesus do? Jesus loved everyone and commanded Christians to do the same. That includes everyone. Thieves, gamblers, drunks, cranky bitchy self-righteous old church ladies, and yes, even special snowflakes.

Would Jesus ask church goers to leave their purses and wallets in the corner so thieves could steal? Or have a bottle of vodka for the congregation's alcoholics? Or let special snowflakes share the holy sacrament of marriage?

I wonder how many of the special snowflakes who are trying to drive out this Archbishop are actually practicing Catholics... probably very few.

So to all you special snowflakes, give it a rest. We know you're there. We know you're special. We know you deserve a decent, respectful life. We don't care what you do.

Just leave us alone and shut the hell up.

Richard L. Bare, Director of ‘Green Acres,’ Dies at 101

By DANIEL E. SLOTNIK NY TIMES

Richard L. Bare, a director whose career began during World War II and who became a Hollywood mainstay in the early days of television, died on March 28 at his home in Newport Beach, Calif. He was 101.

His death was confirmed by his son, Jon. Mr. Bare directed virtually every episode of the long-running rural CBS sitcom "Green Acres," as well as several episodes of "The Twilight Zone." As he made clear in his comprehensive guide to his craft, "The Film Director," he prided himself on an unpretentious approach to filmmaking.

"Some of the other directors that weren’t as lucky as I am were probably more bent on creating a great work of art, you know, and that to me never had any place on television," he said in an interview with the Archive of American Television in 2003.

That businesslike attitude helped Mr. Bare churn out numerous episodes of numerous shows from the 1950s to 1970s. He was most prolific in the western genre, working on series like "The Virginian," "Tombstone Territory" and "Broken Arrow."

Mr. Bare recalled that in 1955 he was preparing to shoot the first episode of "Cheyenne," a western series starring Clint Walker, when he met a young actor named James Bumgarner in a Hollywood bar. Mr. Bare, impressed with Mr. Bumgarner’s stature, called him in to read for a bit part on the show, and Warner Bros. executives were so impressed that they offered him a contract (provided he shorten his name). Mr. Garner went on to star on "Maverick" — Mr. Bare directed him in several episodes — and, later, "The Rockford Files."

Mr. Bare began directing "Green Acres," which starred Eddie Albert and Eva Gabor as a sophisticated Manhattan couple who move to a farm, in 1965. He said in 2003 that he took over for Ralph Levy, who was credited as director of the first two episodes, because Mr. Levy was using "strange camera angles" and trying to coax "magnificent performances" from Mr. Albert and Ms. Gabor instead of completing the show.

"Making ‘Green Acres’ art!" he scoffed. "Can you imagine ‘Green Acres’ being art?"

Art or not, the show became a popular addition to other country-themed CBS shows like "The Beverly Hillbillies" and "Petticoat Junction," of which "Green Acres" was a spinoff. Mr. Bare directed 166 episodes before the show was canceled in 1971.

Later that year Mr. Bare published "The Film Director," which demystified the technical aspects of filmmaking and offered advice on how to manage actors.

"Interestingly written as a clear and well-illustrated handbook for the beginner who is interested in eventually becoming a professional film director, the book not only describes all of the basic techniques the student will have to master, it also takes him behind the scenes into the world of the director," Bernard Gladstone wrote in a review in The New York Times.

An updated edition, with a foreword by Mr. Garner, was released in 2000.

Richard Leland Bare was born in Turlock, Calif., on Aug. 12, 1913, to a family that owned vineyards. He grew up interested in photography and shot a short western as a student at Modesto High School.

He studied architecture and film at the University of Southern California and in 1932 made "The Oval Portrait," an adaptation of an Edgar Allan Poe story that is considered the university’s first student film. Shot for $400, it won the Paul Muni Award, a college film competition sponsored by Warner Bros.

Mr. Bare’s first professional work was a comedy short that he wrote and directed called "So You Want to Give Up Smoking." The film starred George O’Hanlon as a bumbling Everyman named Joe McDoakes who was trying to kick the habit.

Warner Bros. bought the short for $2,500 and released it in theaters in 1942. It was so popular — and so cheap to produce — that the studio asked Mr. Bare to make more. He completed one more, "So You Think You Need Glasses," before spending several years in the Army Air Forces’ motion picture unit during World War II.

After the war Warner Bros. offered Mr. Bare a 10-year contract to keep writing and directing 10-minute McDoakes shorts, which placed the hard-luck Joe in a variety of comic situations. He directed and produced more than 60 of the films, and wrote many of them as well.

After that series ended in the mid-1950s, Mr. Bare mainly worked in television. In 1959 he won a Directors Guild of America award for the "77 Sunset Strip" episode "All Our Yesterdays." Among the most memorable of his seven "Twilight Zone" episodes was "To Serve Man," about a linguistic misunderstanding between aliens and humanity, widely regarded as one of the show’s best. Over the years he also directed some features, including the western "Shoot-Out at Medicine Bend" (1957) and, with William Rowland, the gang thriller "This Rebel Breed" (1960). His last film was the 1973 thriller "Wicked, Wicked," which he wrote and directed.

He stopped directing in the mid-1970s. In recent years he had been developing a Broadway version of "Green Acres."

Mr. Bare was married five times. His marriages to Virginia Carpenter and the actresses Phyllis Coates, Julie Van Zandt and Jeanne Evans ended in divorce. He was married to the former Gloria Beutel until her death in 2012. Survivors include his son.

While shooting "Green Acres," Mr. Bare had to manage not just his two sometimes temperamental stars but also a prominent member of the supporting cast: a pig named Arnold.

"He was a little bit troublesome," Mr. Bare said. "He’s what I called a ‘Method pig.’ "

By his account, Mr. Bare rose to the challenge.

"For a long time I was the best pig director in Hollywood," he once said. "There was nobody that could direct a pig like I could."

　

Richard Dysart, Emmy-Winning Actor on ‘L.A. Law,’ Dies at 86

By BRUCE WEBER NY TIMES

Richard Dysart, a character actor who specialized in lawyers, doctors and other authority figures — most notably Leland McKenzie, the founding partner of the law firm McKenzie, Brackman, Chaney & Kuzak, on the soapy-serious prime-time drama "L.A. Law" — died on Sunday at his home in Santa Monica, Calif. He was 86.

The cause was cancer, said his wife, Kathryn Jacobi Dysart.

A handsome man with a distinguished but not especially distinctive screen presence, Mr. Dysart was for most of his career an "Oh yeah, that guy" sort of performer in movies and on TV in roles requiring executive demeanor, kindly rectitude, patriarchal spine or the confidence stemming from success or power.

He played doctors in "The Hospital" (1971), a scabrous comedy written by Paddy Chayefsky and starring George C. Scott and Diana Rigg; "The Terminal Man" (1974), based on Michael Crichton’s medical thriller about brain surgery and mind control; "First You Cry" (1978), a television movie adaptation of the first-person account of a mastectomy and its aftermath by the newscaster Betty Rollin, who was played by Mary Tyler Moore; and "Being There" (1979), an adaptation of Jerzy Kosinski’s short satirical novel about a simple-minded gardener (Peter Sellers) who becomes a presidential adviser.

In appearances on television series and in movies from the 1960s through the early 1980s, he played Judge Russell R. Leggett, who presided over the Jean Harris murder trial; the movie mogul Jack Warner; a fictional secretary of defense; and Edwin M. Stanton, Abraham Lincoln’s secretary of war.

In the 1980s he twice played Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower in TV movies, and twice President Harry S. Truman: once in "Day One," a television movie about the atomic bomb, and once in "War and Remembrance," the mini-series adapted from Herman Wouk’s novel. Later, he twice played J. Edgar Hoover, director of the F.B.I.: once in the TV movie "Marilyn and Bobby: Her Final Affair" (1993), an account of an alleged romance between Marilyn Monroe and Robert F. Kennedy, and once in "Panther" (1995), Mario Van Peebles’s dramatized history of the Black Panther Party.

"L.A. Law," seen on NBC from 1986 to 1994, made him widely known. Created by Steven Bochco and Terry Louise Fisher, the show — which also starred Harry Hamlin, Jimmy Smits, Susan Dey, Jill Eikenberry, Susan Ruttan and Corbin Bernsen, among others — focused on the firm led by McKenzie, a sometimes paternal, sometimes ruthless executive who presides over an office full of well-dressed, ambitious, usually greedy and very often randy partners and underlings.

Dealing in both serious issues (sex crimes, corruption, minority rights, police brutality) and outlandish comedy, the show was part sendup of yuppie (the term was current then) privilege and the breed of affluence particular to Los Angeles, part melodrama and part legitimate contemplation of the problems in a disparate and rancorous modern society.

As McKenzie fended off challenges to his leadership, managed complicated lawsuits and his unruly personnel, and conducted a couple of ill-advised romances — one with a much younger woman, another with a high-powered rival who is memorably dispatched when she tumbles down an elevator shaft to her death — Mr. Dysart was nominated for Emmy Awards four times. He won for outstanding supporting actor in a drama series in 1992.

Richard Allen Dysart was born outside Boston on March 30, 1929, and grew up in Skowhegan and Augusta, Me. His father, Douglas, was a podiatrist. During a childhood illness he became enthralled with radio drama, and his mother, the former Alice Hennigar, introduced him to the stage at a summer stock company, the Lakewood Theater, outside Skowhegan.

He interrupted his schooling at Emerson College in Boston with a stint in the Air Force, and when he returned to Emerson he performed in plays there while earning a bachelor’s degree and a master’s in speech communication.

In the late 1950s he moved to New York, where he was working in the box office at the Off Broadway Circle in the Square Theater when he got his break: a job as an understudy in José Quintero’s famous production of Eugene O’Neill’s "The Iceman Cometh," starring Jason Robards.

Several roles at Circle in the Square followed — including, when he was just 29, the sagacious stage manager in Thornton Wilder’s "Our Town." He later worked for the director William Ball, founder of the American Conservatory Theater, which in 1966 made its permanent home in San Francisco. He also appeared a handful of times on Broadway, including, in 1972, as Coach in "That Championship Season," Jason Miller’s Tony-winning drama about the reunion of a high school basketball team.

Mr. Dysart’s other film credits include "The Day of the Locust" (1975), the nightmarish Hollywood fable adapted from Nathanael West’s novel; "Pale Rider" (1985), a western in which he played a villain opposite Clint Eastwood; "Mask" (1985), a fact-based drama about a boy with a deformed skull (Eric Stoltz) and his devoted mother (Cher), in which Mr. Dysart played Cher’s father; and "Back to the Future III" (1990), the finale of the time-traveling comic adventure series. Mr. Dysart played a barbed-wire salesman.

Mr. Dysart’s first two marriages ended in divorce. In addition to his wife, whom he married in 1987, he is survived by a stepson, Arie Jacobi, and two step-grandchildren

Up in the old hotel: what the Strathmore says about Detroit's growing pains

’

Many of the bankrupt city’s stately buildings will now be restored with care and attention to detail, including the once-great apartment hotel

Laura Barton in Detroit

 

　

The old Strathmore Hotel stands on West Alexandrine in Detroit’s midtown. A red-brick building, eight storeys high, casting its windowless gaze over a rapidly changing part of this city. Below lie some of the familiar indicators of urban gentrification: a hipster coffee shop, a craft beer saloon, and not so very far away, a Whole Foods. But in other regards, and certainly in the case of the Strathmore, there is a hope that in Detroit the process of renewal might be different than it has been for other cities.

The Strathmore was built in 1924, and for 40 years ran as an apartment hotel before being converted into a rental building. For the past decade, however, it has stood empty, ceilings sagging, plaster peeling, ivy winding its way around the window frames. At ground level it has been embellished with depictions of men in suits wearing gas masks, painted by street artists the Hygienic Dress League. Just below its roofline runs a crown of block-faced graffiti: PAIDAWAY it reads, EDDY and CASH4DROID.

Derelict buildings are of course nothing new in Detroit – throughout the city, from homes to factories, apartment blocks to movie theaters, they stand ravaged by time and fire and nature; websites, documentaries, coffee-table books and countless newspaper articles have been dedicated to their eerie magnificence.

But a year ago a study by the Detroit Blight Removal Task Force, an organization put together by the Obama administration, found that 78,506 buildings across the city’s 139 square miles were dilapidated, and 114,000 parcels of land were vacant. It advised the city to tear down 40,000 abandoned houses, restore thousands more, and spend approximately $1bn on demolishing or restoring its 559 deserted factory buildings if it wants to hold on to any hope of renewal.

The process of restoration takes not just money but time. In 2012 it was announced that the Strathmore was the latest of midtown’s wrecks to be tackled. "It’s a great, big hulking nothing," said Robbert McKay, an historic architect with the Michigan state historic preservation office. "It’s three times taller than anything else around there, so something had to happen to it, because if it didn’t the renovation of that area would never have been complete." Curbed Detroit put it more brutally, describing the building as "midtown’s biggest blight monster".

But its restoration was not an easy prospect. When Midtown Detroit Inc bought the property they noted that it had been through the hands of five different developers in the previous five years, all of whom found themselves flummoxed by the idea of how to renovate such a huge and devastated space.

McKay’s involvement in the renovation of the Strathmore – and other projects – is an intricate and measured process. "Specifically I work with developers interested in the federal historic tax credit," he explained. What this means, hopefully, is that in the rush to rejuvenate a bankrupt city, many of its stately buildings will be restored with care and attention to detail, rather than the bland bulk refits that have characterized many of the hasty warehouse conversions of major western cities.

"In an ideal world I get involved as soon as a developer decides to start work on the building," McKay explained. "Earlier is always better. I can spend two years working with the developer before it’s all approved. Some projects take five years, though the life cycle is usually two years in planning and financing and two years in construction."

The first part of McKay’s task involves basic reconnaissance, he said: "I figure out what’s there, define that the building is eligible [for the historic tax credit], using tonnes of photos." Along with Detroit-based architects Hamilton Anderson and Associates he consulted the Manning Brothers Historic Photographic Collection, a 250,000-strong archive of images from the vaults of a commercial photography company operating between 1906 and 1989 and capturing "virtually every office building, theatre, private club, store and major industry in the city of Detroit."

The next stage for McKay is working out "what do we do to make it a usable space, practical by today’s standards but without altering the sense of its history." In terms of the Strathmore, he says, "There wasn’t a lot there, except the building’s exterior. But we have to use new materials that reflect what was there. It’s a negotiable process."

In the Strathmore’s case, the renovator’s trick of stripping back a building’s plasterwork to expose its brick walls is not permitted, as it would not be in keeping with the structure’s historic nature. However modern features such as hardwood floors and stone work-surfaces have been deemed acceptable. The building’s real feature will be its atrium: the Strathmore is a doughnut-shaped structure, with a central courtyard and glass skylight which the developers hope to make a community space and garden room.

One of McKay – and Detroit’s – great successes has been the renovation of the David Whitney building, an historic Class A skyscraper in the city’s downtown area. Built in 1915, it was an impressive example of neo-renaissance style, with a terra cotta and glazed brick exterior, designed by architect Daniel Burnham. However, in 1959 many of its decorative elements were removed, its elaborate cornices making way for a plainer "modern top". But then a renovation project was begun by the Roxbury Group.

"The Whitney was a fun project because it’s at the other end of the spectrum [to the Strathmore]," explained McKay. "The lobby is spectacular, and there was lots of richness in its historic material. The building was historic, and although lots had been done to the exterior, they had documentation to show what was there before, including lions and pediments."

Indeed, the return of those lions has been a source of great professional pride for McKay. There are 26 in total, each three feet across, positioned 19 floors up, Unable to budget for the original terra cotta, McKay instead opted to use fiberglass, a material that is more durable, cheaper and considerably lighter – where the originals probably weighed 400-500lbs, their modern replacements weight just 120lbs.

"In Europe, you’d use the original materials – but it can be very difficult in this country to get good terracotta," says McKay. "Does it trouble me that we haven’t used the same material? It does when it’s down low. But these are way up, so no. People aren’t going to be able to appreciate the detail on them, but it means something to me. It was remarkable to see the lions fly up there."

The model for the lion heads was created by Detroit sculptor Sergio De Giusti, then molded by the Plymouth-based company Glassline Inc, who specialize in fiberglass-reinforced plastic and have been as surprised as anyone to find a rush of commissions from Detroit. They have also been responsible for a new version of the Whitney’s original rooftop sign, 67-feet wide, as well as projects for the luxurious Book-Cadillac Hotel and the Buhl Building, both downtown, and new cornices for the Detroit Savings Bank in Capitol Park, among others.

They owe much of this demand to the might of Michigan’s historic preservation office. "Detroit and Grand Rapids have two of the strongest preservation ethics in the state," McKay explained. "Do we win all the battles? No. But we win most of them. Especially next to Chicago or New York or Philadelphia, we compare favourably."

In Detroit, of course, these buildings – whether in boom-time or bust, have been a rich part of the city’s history, and residents feel too possessive of them, even in their dilapidated state, to see them entirely re-imagined without respect for their past. "People understand, I think, the value of real history," McKay said. "You can make things look old, but there’s a difference between applied history and real history."

McKay describes himself as "optimistic" for the future of Detroit’s architecture. "I’ve been doing this for 17 years, and the Detroit that I visited in the first two weeks is so completely different to the Detroit that I see now," he said. "I can’t go any place in the city where I can’t see a project that I’ve been involved with. And that’s what proves to me that this is a telling moment." Already he sees the restoration spreading from Downtown – where he is working on "buildings that have been under-occupied, creating an environment for 20-30-somethings who want to be downtown and don’t mind that it’s a little edgy" – and further out into the city "up Woodward, around Michigan Avenue and East Jefferson Avenue. It’s getting stronger."

Some of that strength lies in the forms of public-private partnership that have funded many of these projects. The Strathmore, for instance, will take a budgeted $28m to turn into 129 apartments, 2,000 square feet of commercial space, a sum that has been provided by midtown Detroit Inc, a St Louis-based development partner McCormack Baron Salazar, and a long list of development organizations: US Department of Housing and Urban Development; Michigan state housing development authority; Michigan economic development corporation; city of Detroit; US Bank; Invest Detroit; Detroit Development Fund; Enterprise Community Partners; Ford Foundation; the Kresge Foundation; Hudson-Webber Foundation.

With midtown currently seeing a 97% occupancy rate, this seems like a sound investment – though the developers have been mindful to ensure the area does not become an elitist enclave: 60% of the apartments will stand at market rate, 40% will be offered for affordable housing rates.

The hope is that any potential flashpoints between Detroit’s long-term residents and newcomers might be calmed by the wider benefits the redevelopments are bringing to the city. "People who’ve lived in Detroit bridle at all these affluent, largely white kids moving in," said Michael Hodges, fine arts writer for the Detroit News, and creator of the photography website Unexpected Detroit. "They’re privileged, but they’re starting businesses and also they pay taxes – and Detroit desperately needs tax-bases.

"I think Detroit’s getting hot enough to get investment now," he continued. "The Free Press building [in Downtown] has been bought by Chinese investors. And now every year two or three major movies shoot here." Films to recently shoot in Detroit include Batman v Superman, and the Transformers trilogy.

Hodges grew up here, then moved away for 20 years before returning in 1991. "It didn’t feel as hopeful then as it does now," he said. "The current shift came with the 2008 financial collapse. Then the national attitude softened, I think, because the rest of the country was caught up in it too – until then it had been very contemptuous and scornful of Detroit."

He sees echoes in his city now of New York, as it was when he lived there in the mid-80s, "when New York was still a wreck, before it became a playground for the filthy-rich, and I was fascinated by it." A similar process seems to be taking place in Detroit, he said: "Some of the first people who moved downtown were artists and craftspeople – people who wanted space and didn’t want to pay high rents. Now you’ve started to see these kids moving in from the suburbs. It used to be that if you grew up in the suburbs and wanted urban grit you moved to New York or Chicago, but now it’s suddenly cool and sexy to say you’re moving downtown."

Not all of the restoration projects have been successful. "You do look at some buildings and think ‘This is not going to end well’," McKay conceded, while Hodges admits that "some of the early renovations were done on the cheap. And Detroit is just so vast, it’s sometimes a little hard to imagine those outer neighbourhoods will come back." But he sees good reason for hope for the city’s architectural future: "The process of rebuilding has not been as cruel as other cities, like New York," he explained. "The ruins have shifted from being shameful to there being something inherently beautiful and profound."

Both Hodges and McKay cite the Michigan Central Station as the structure they would most like to see restored. "It is a brooding, beautiful building," Hodges says. "It was designed with the intention of making you feel small and insignificant," McKay explains. "And it still does that. It was from a time when volume was king."

Opened in 1913, at the peak of rail travel in the US, it was then the tallest railway station in the world, a Beaux-Arts monolith that served some 200 trains each day. Its main waiting room was modelled on a Roman bathhouse, with marble walls and vaulted ceilings, and there was a Doric columned hall and a concourse with a copper skylight. With the rise of the automobile, however, the station drifted into disuse and decline, and in 1988, with the end of the city’s Amtrak service, it closed entirely.

Since then it has seen a level of disrepair almost as magnificent as the structure itself. "The inside has been ravaged," McKay says. "Mostly by suburban white kids in this destructo-Disneyland. It’s what 14- and 15-year-old kids do."

"I’ve been on every floor," said Hodges. "The basement is inky black. There’s a lot of homeless people there. Running along the ceiling in the middle level there are conduits that held copper wire, and all have been stripped for their metal. So you keep running into these conduits in the dark." Once, he says, a homeless man showed him around the building. "He took us to this manhole, and inside there was a perfectly clean skeleton of a dog."

Today it sits sealed it off, and lit it up at night. Any restoration work relies upon the whim of its owner, Manuel Maroun (who bought the station in 1995, and also owns the Ambassador bridge – the main route to Canada) and so far has seen slow progress. Most recently an architectural company was commissioned to supply over a thousand new windows "sensitive to the historic value" of the building, but its total renovation is estimated to cost anywhere from $80m to $300m. "There was so much damage and it was such an elaborate building that it’s so complicated to restore it," said McKay. "But the day that finishes, I will retire."

How soon, then, might we expect his retirement? "Well the Depot is now right on the edge of where things are starting to happen," he said. "That building has become so synonymous with the decline of Detroit that for me to see it restored would be a beacon of how far we’ve come back."